


Sneezy, Queasy, Teasy, Wheezy, Easy, Squeezy, Freezy

by honeyhoneybee



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allergies, Asthma, Common Cold, Fluff, Good Parent Grace Hargreeves, Influenza, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Sickfic, Stomach Ache, Vomiting, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 19:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19893136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyhoneybee/pseuds/honeyhoneybee
Summary: Grace can tell when any of her kids are sick by the slightest fluctuations in their normal behaviors.Kidfic about Grace taking care of the kids when they're sick, knowing all the signs and knowing exactly what kinds of illnesses they're the most prone to.





	Sneezy, Queasy, Teasy, Wheezy, Easy, Squeezy, Freezy

Luther was a sneezy kid. 

He had awful hayfever, and he always tended to sneeze a lot after Grace dusted.

Out of all of her children, he was the most prone to headcolds. And she could tell whether he was suffering from allergies or a cold just from the quality of his sneeze.

Normally, they came in twos, and this occurred a few times throughout the day. 

On days when the pollen count was really high, he would sneeze in bursts, multiple times in a row. They fell out on top of each other, one right after the other. Once he got eight out without taking a single breath in between.

“My little machine gun,” Grace would say affectionately, as she handed the sniffly, teary-eyed boy a tissue. He would try to thank her, but more often than not he’d cut himself off with another sneeze before he could.

“Quiet, boy,” Reginald would say whenever Luther dared to sneeze more than twice in his presence.

Grace noticed when he started holding his sneezes in, at around age ten. She frowned at the squelched little sounds, an obvious attempt to appease his father.

“Let them out, dear. You know you’ll feel a lot better if you do,” she told him one afternoon, while the then thirteen-year-old was in the middle of a bad allergy fit that had sent his father walking away in disgust.

“Dad says I’m being too loud and I need to control myself,” the blonde said shakily, breath uneven. His eyes unfocused and his face crumbled as he fought an obvious, desperate fight against another oncoming sneeze, which would be his fifteenth since he'd come in from training with Reginald. Grace couldn't even imagine what it was like when he was actually outside

“Your father isn’t here, silly,” she tutted. “And you can’t help having allergies. It's not your fault."

Instead of responding, Luther just ducked his head down into his hand, pinching his nose shut in another silent spasm.

As in, completely silent. No sound. Grace had no sense of physical pain, and she still winced.

She quickly learned that, when Luther was sick, it was harder for him to hold back.

Typically, within the first 24 hours, he would be too exhausted to hold in his sneezes, something that never happened when it was just allergies.

And they didn’t come out in sudden bursts, one right after the other, like when he had allergies. They came in twos but they were way louder, more desperate. They sounded painful and tiring, like they were ripping at his throat and taking up all his energy.

He would start off trying to stifle them, but it wouldn’t work out too well for him. So instead of pinching his nose shut, he would resolve himself to muffling his loud sneezes into his elbow.

And he would apologize profusely afterwards, shrinking in on himself and trying to make himself look smaller, the poor thing. Especially if he was in the presence of his father, who would turn his lip up in disgust and order him out of his sight.

Grace would pass him a tissue and offer him a sad smile as she led him up to his room, knowing how bad it was from how easy it was to convince him to settle down and get some rest.

He rarely got stomach bugs or chest colds, but he was prone to head colds. He got very congested, which could sometimes lead to sinus infections, and less frequently ear infections if they didn’t catch it early enough and let it spread. Usually it was just small colds with low grade fevers, but they occurred pretty frequently. 

He obviously had sinus problems, but Grace knew that his tendency to stifle his sneezes definitely didn’t help with that either. She also suspected a deviated septum from one of the multiple times he’d broken his nose during training might be responsible. But he was too young to do anything about it.

She was planning on getting it looked at when he got older. But then his body changed.

As he got older, his endurance improved. So much so that Reginald added “Heightened Endurance” to his list of powers in addition to strength.

So he stopped getting sick as often. His allergies remained but they became more manageable, or maybe he just got better at hiding them.

And even though it happened less frequently, Grace still paid close attention to the way he sneezed.

Seventeen years later, it was the same exact story.

After Luther came back home from the moon with a compromised immune system from isolation, he sneezed constantly, even more often than he had before his powers kicked in. His body was adjusting to Earth, which meant his allergies came back with a vengeance and he picked up every bug that was thrown at him, but now he was also prone to nasty fevers that would leave him incapacitated for days.

But after all of the changes to his body over the years, he still stifled his sneezes in the exact same way. And Grace still listened for the moment they got louder, ready to jump into action with a bowl of soup and a pack of Kleenex.

Some things never change.

**Author's Note:**

> ~just to clarify, this is kidfic and i'm not whumping the kids for adult reasons, it's meant to be cute~
> 
> The other chapters probably won't be this long, Luther's just my fave. <3


End file.
